As a heavy snow fell — partially blocking the crowd’s view of the athletes – each skier was still able to catch air, slide down towering walls and slither his way down the icy halfpipe with admirable success.

U.S. hopefuls David Wise and Torin Yater-Wallace were the favorites going into the qualifying rounds, but Justin Dorey of Canada grabbed the lead with a score of 91.6 and Wise placed second.

Meanwhile, Yater-Wallace — considered one of the best halfpipe skiers in the world — failed to advance after fumbling in both his qualification runs.

With Yater-Wallace out of the race, Dorey and Wise went head-to-head in the finals round. After wrecking on his first run (curse you, terrible weather!), Dorsey rebounded a bit his second time around. But the Canadian’s recovery wasn’t enough against Wise who, despite taking a fall during one of his last runs, earned a whopping high score of 92.

In the end, Wise took the gold, with Canada’s Mike Riddle receiving silver and Kevin Rolland of France winning bronze.

What was your favorite moment from Tuesday’s coverage of the games? Did you catch the action in the men’s snowboard cross? What about when Slovenia’s Tina Maze nabbed her second gold of the games in the giant slalom? And can anyone stop the Netherlands when it comes to speedskating? Sound off in the comments!

i LOVED watching David Wise win. I watched the live feed, not the NBC coverage, so I’m not sure in what ways NBC went into his backstory, but he just seems like the coolest guy. married with a 2 year old daughter, just wants to encourage more people to start skiing. I also thought a lot about Canadian Sarah Burke, a pioneer in free skiing, who died 2 years ago in a training accident and was at the forefront of getting this event into the Olympics, I know she’d be so proud of the show the athletes have put on.

Today was a bit of a letdown after yesterday’s ice dancing. But I did enjoy the half pipe skiing…in the snow! Wise was great, but there were some nasty falls in the competition. The US snowboarder Diebold who took home Bronze was a great story as well. Snowboard cross was kind of crazy!

My favorite moment involved the Snowboard Cross finals. In contrast to most of the events where you have just one person competing at a time, an entire section went down the hill at the same time. It actually reminded me a horse race. However, it was also my unfavorite moment because of the course on which you had rain, sleet, snow and fog all going at some time or another. It was yet another example of the folly of putting the Winter Olympics in a place where temps can rise into the sixties. I felt sorry for the contestants.